Rumpus Original Poetry: Three Poems by Jennifer Givhan
The Butterflies
Two chrysalids didn’t make it through their rebirths. We’ll bury them in the backyard, at Lina’s request, sending them back to the earth. All the other butterflies flew away but the one the children named Wilbert wouldn’t or couldn’t so we’re keeping him. The children say he’s not ready to leave.
~
Wilbert has flown away. The two greyish green chrysalids are brittling in the backyard. I haven’t the heart to bury them yet. I must steel my nerves, for Lina.
~
Good thing we hadn’t held the chrysalid funeral yet. The two butterflies emerged. Damaged wings but reborn. We were just readying the funeral when I picked up the jar and Lina exclaimed There’s butterflies! The shock made her stomach ache. Now she’s crying happy tears her butterflies are back from the dead.
~
Lazarus butterflies!
One’s wing is curled completely into the other, as if still wrapped in its chrysalis.
They both drink sugar water from a sponge.
~
I’m so relieved I never took the plunge:
my neck, the cord.
The Baby Monitor
The neighbor off to the market for bags of salad leaves
me alone with her baby monitor I’ve set on my balcony
splintered with jags of wood sharpened by rain & rot leaving
scars of yellow paint I ponder what husband or party or
dinner plan would warrant leaving one’s baby in the hands of
a black & white device crackling static in the hands of a woman
who stands on her balcony at night in nothing but stars & the
oven of July pink as the innards of poultry
I’m misrepresenting myself I never owned a baby monitor
Could never leave my babies long enough to need one
The baby sleeps for hours the mother tells me Only call
911 if the house is on fire
Over the muted gray waves of monitor that baby keeps balling
her fists pulling the cross-hatched blanket over her head
It seems too thick The screen goes black sometimes & I
click an eye-shaped button fearing what I’ll find when the
fuzzy baby reemerges I haven’t seen her melon head in
minutes All blanket She rustles as a small mammal in
a cave of her pack-&-play crib like the portable crib we
took to Michigan when we adopted our boy carrying
through LAX all those empty accoutrements of small life: car
seat stroller diaper bag pack-&-play No baby
People kept glancing skeptically at my squishy midsection
in confusion or grief or pity looked away
I was a motel bed a rental space a mother of loss
sheened of wet leaves waiting for paperwork to go through
no idea what to do when the baby kept vomiting his fawn
Enfamil bottles the hospital had sent us home with
The months before his birth I’d tried hormones for
stimulating milk flow suction-cupped my breasts until my
nipples went from sore to numb Still nothing
That child has grown so tall He’s a mass of unkempt curls
he will not let me brush & shirts-off shorts-backwards
all summer He says he may move to Michigan when he grows
up & doesn’t mean to hurt me
The baby didn’t sleep nearly as long as the mother said It’s
a burden all this watching all this distance A cloth-
draped chair or maybe a vacuum appears to me as a
ghost
Of course none of this is about the neighbor mother
A light flashes A blur The baby may have woken
May have found the monitor & with her dimpled baby
hands knocked it over
If I were a machine I’d make babies every year one new &
shining unbroken thing a piece
Who knows what happens next What smothers or burns
M o t h e r !
__i.
the tarot grubs spread in the wound
everything breaks the house smells of garbage
the miniature dog has eaten splinters
they root in her small stomach
another night we rubbed essential oil
on a grungy green paper dollar folded into
triangles in a stout copper pot & lit it
with matches my baby girl in her footy pajamas
used to set the incense burning & my hand
slipped the fire caught her foot & scoured
a hole through the flame-resistant fabric
clean through to her new skin then comes Death
the final outcome: what should’ve been freely given
will be taken by force we peel our faces off & run
__ii.
through a grove of oranges bright globes
against the rind of moon we’ve implored not
for metaphor but for food our bellies bulge
& the little dog is chewing our calves our knees
we bend to set her gnawing tree bark instead
we cannot bend & the world is rising
as another morning the hot air balloon
outside my bedroom window on the ancient mesa
I told my baby daughter of the ones I’d dropped
when I was a girl child & when I was a woman
with a tractor man a plough man a man who dug
into the rocks & weeds where I was hiding
__as we’re hiding? she whispers faceless & I sing
yes darling keep the grass to your belly don’t let go
__iii.
as I unlatched from mine for she was damaged
for she pressed her belly to kitchen tile & let
a father man a tin-can man a bearded silver steak-
knife man call her fat call her shit call her
mine was glorious once I’ve heard
the night insects & the bats screeching toward nectar
their offspring clinging to their bare chests
as they fly toward the cacti that only bloom one
night a year & they do drink & they do drink
for they have starved in their caves to make milk
by now the threat has passed or the cacti have needed
us too what fruits we’ve collected
we squash into our mouths & the daughter asks
juice dribbling down her new skin where has she gone?
__iv.
I have feared & I have feared the question
was coming